PS3 hard drive may get an upgrade

Foster City (CA) - With two weeks before the launch of a 120 GB Xbox 360, Sony said today that it is considering coming out with a Playstation 3 that boasts a larger internal capacity. While Sony did not comment on how much more space a new PS3 may provide, it has filed an FCC application that makes reference to an 80 GB hard drive for the console. Microsoft is set to launch the Xbox 360 Elite, a new version of its console that has a 120 GB hard disk drive, twice the size of the current PS3 HDD.

The news also comes after Sony officially canned its basic 20 GB PS3. "For users who vigorously store (games and other entertainment content) in the PS3, 20-giga is probably going to be too small, and even 60 giga may not be big enough eventually," said a Sony Computer Entertainment spokesperson in a USA Today story.

He went on to say that "core components" would not be changed in the higher capacity version of the PS3, but that "addition and deletion is quite possible," meaning Sony could possibly cut the PS2 Emotion Engine in the 80 GB console.